NN42, June 2009
A Safari Towards Aid Effectiveness?
International Cooperation (IC) in Skills Development in Latin America: Tensions in Promoting National and Local Policies
By Claudia Jacinto, RedEtis IIEP-UNESCO, Buenos Aires
Email: cjacinto@redetis.iipe-ides.org.arKeywords
Latin America
Summary
This piece examines aid for skills development in Latin America, noting the tensions that arise at various levels.
In the last decade, and especially since the Paris Declaration was signed in 2005, an increasing concern with the efficiency of activities on the ground as well as the arrival of new agencies has promoted changes in IC perspectives and operations, enriched links to national policies and development agendas, as well as cooperation and coordination between agencies at the national levels. Nowadays, there is a strong intention to move away from stand-alone projects by introducing sectoral programming, supporting education and vocational training through permanent institutional provision and/or sustainable local development approaches. Even though there are obvious differences amongst the agencies? frameworks, their main objectives are similar. Agencies? agendas have emphasized the need to combine resources, know-how, large-scale programme components, etc. Even if there are some initiatives with these cooperative approaches, these proposed combined efforts are sometimes not feasible, as the agencies frequently complain of the difficulties to combine agendas, actions and procedures even amongst IC agencies that have long been present in the region.
Throughout the years, strong agency leadership in programme implementation in the region has tended to be progressively complemented by or even replaced by recipients? leadership. However, this more participative management style is not at all general and the tensions frequently deriving from an asymmetric relationship are usually still present in many externally aided components, from the activities on the ground to the fund management and evaluation. Cultural diversity, political and technical differences all tend to make dialogue with local actors more difficult. As the number of actors increases, processes and schedules become more complex. In such cases, the tension between efficient execution and linking strategies with the local authorities and other local actors becomes critical. The key dilemma is what to prioritise in order to be efficient.
The current IC agencies? perspective emphasizes their role as ?promoters of local governments and national actors?. Nevertheless, it may be argued that global consistency of public policies ? national, provincial and local - is hard or perhaps even impossible to achieve; one of the reasons is of course that they may have different political and/or ideological orientations. Sometimes national public organizations involved in skills development have little internal coordination and linkage with other institutions, as they work on isolated objectives, interests and priorities and have never developed a long-term vision in technical and vocational education and training policies. Actually, not only are institutions lacking integration, but also they have different perspectives about skills development. The question is: what should the role of IC agencies be when there is no consensus about some issues within the country? In the end, supporting long-term development strategies while promoting sustainable development at different levels should be on the objective.
Note: for a full discussion of the issues just touched upon in this article, see The role of international cooperation in education and training for work in Latin America, Paper 13, Debates in Skills Development (Buenos Aires workshop May 2008), Working Group for International Cooperation in Skills Development, Geneva, accessible at http://www.norrag.org/wg
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